Call centre move prompts strike

A council strike is looming in Hammersmith and Fulham due to a controversial move of the council's call centre to Rochdale, reports Rochdale online.

Unison, the union representing the call centre workers, says the council has reneged on a promise to find alternative jobs for staff and have 'bullied' employees into taking leave before they are made redundant.

The move will create up to 20 new jobs in Rochdale and save taxpayers in the London borough around £150 000 (R2.1 million) a year according to Rochdale Council's IT services contractor.

IPscape and Sema are in an agreement whereby Sema will offer software-as-a-service contact centre services based on IPscape technology, according to PR.com.

The alliance adds inbound, outbound and blended hosted contact centre services to existing business solutions and the 'largest privately owned direct mail operation in Australia'.

Sema is an Australian-owned multi-channel communications group that enables effective closed loop, data driven communications to customers and prospects on behalf of Tier One and Two private enterprise and government organisations.

Autoglass, the UK vehicle glass repair and replacement company, will deploy the next-generation Impact 360 Quality Monitoring solution from Verint according to The News Tribune.

Through Verint and Avaya business partner IP Integration, Autoglass plans to deploy the solution for quality monitoring across 250 contact centre agent seats at its head office in Bedford, UK.

The organisation believes the Impact 360 software will deliver critical insights through active agent performance assessments and focused agent training and development, along with the solution's ability to help gauge business process effectiveness and other internal operations efficiencies.